2.2 renamed to 2.5, and other info (like release dates!)

[Rick Brewster]

First off, Paint.NET v2.2 has been renamed to Paint.NET v2.5. Yup, just a 0.3 bump in version (well, 0.4 bump from v2.1), but I felt it was important because this release has turned in to way more than a simple "0.1" point-release. The code base has, so far, grown by more than 30% (v2.1 was 68,000 lines of code, v2.5 is up to 88,000 as of right now). Version 2.1 was mostly a "quality control" release that cleaned up a ton of bugs and issues from version 2.0. There were a lot of work items, but they were all fairly small. Version 2.5, on the other hand, has fewer work items but they're all fairly involved and non-trivial.

Second, the release date! Paint.NET v2.5 "Final" will be released on November 30th, 2005. We'll be wrapping up new coding work by the end of October and we're devoting the entire month of November to fixing bugs and updating (or hopefully rewriting) the help file. This will also give Dennis time to finalize and iron out the German translation.

Also, what's after v2.5? Well, naturally it is v2.6. This will be a straight feature-parity port (plus maybe bug fixes, we'll see) over to Whidbey, aka Visual Studio 2005 and C#/.NET 2.0. It will also have full and native support for 64-bit Windows. The goal is to have one installer that covers everything. The release date for v2.6 is tentatively set at January 15th, 2006. Users running 32-bit Windows will want to upgrade as well, as no doubt the performance will be better. We'll see what else we can do to entice you to upgrade

Anyway, that's all for now! Thanks for your continue interest in Paint.NET.

[S0S]

The code base has, so far, grown by more than 30% (v2.1 was 68,000 lines of code, v2.5 is up to 88,000 as of right now).

Hmm....that's a bit of an increase. One of the things that I love about Paint.NET is it's simplicity, ease of use and straightforward design. I also love the idea that Paint.NET hasn't exploded into bloatware as I like to keep my system as streamlined as possible.

My question is, will Paint.NET be able to stay under the 100,000 mark as far as lines of code go in the future, Rick?

[Rick Brewster]

It doesn't matter how many lines of code an application is. 100,000 lines of code doesn't flip some switch that magically turns it into "bloatware." Even at 88,000 lines of code, Paint.NET can be compressed to a 766K ZIP file (excluding the help file, and the Staging directory in our install directory). If we went up another 12,000 lines of code, that would probably only increase the zip to 780K or so.

A lot of the code in v2.5 has been for "under the hood" type stuff. We haven't really added much UI or menu items, but we've greatly expanded the functionality available with the existing UI. Or some parts of the UI have been completely rewritten and expanded (File->New, Image->Resize, and Image->Canvas Size, Layers->Rotate/Zoom for instance). These UI rewrites haven't added much UI complexity but have required a lot of code to do. Also, the code for the Blur effect is much more complex now, and is many more lines of code than it used to be, but that was because it was rewritten to make it a whole lot faster.

But, if you want an answer to the question, "Is your goal to keep Paint.NET simple and straightforward?" the answer is a resounding "yes."

[Rick Brewster]

Also, I suppose I should point out that I firmly believe that it is possible to make Paint.NET more powerful while retaining its simplicity -- or even by making it simpler. There are a ton of features that I have shot down simply because they would require a complicated or poorly discoverable UI, or they would complicate or get in the way of existing UI. So rest assured that our goal is not just "add more features to Paint.NET."

[Rick Brewster]

It will tell you when the final version is available. I believe it checks every 3 days.